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BY IVAN SANDERS
STAR SPORTS EDITOR
ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
Happy Valley’s regular season didn’t pan out the way that head coach Jason Jarrett and his squad wanted, but the Warriors will have second life starting Friday when they make the trip to Rockwood for the first round of the TSSAA Class 2-A playoffs.

All records are thrown out the door starting Friday as it will be man-on-man, smash-mouth football with the winner advancing and the loser shutting down until next year.

Records of the regular season are looked at for pairing, but when playoffs come it boils down to the same thing for every team in the state and that is who executes their game plan, who makes the tackles and eliminates mistakes, and avoids falling apart when adversity rears its head.

The Tigers were 7-3 on the regular season and have the home-field advantage for Friday’s game but have actually been a better team away from home having lost two of their three games at home.

For the Warriors, they will need to play a solid game defensively if they are to give themselves a chance for a big road win. Rockwood has scored a total of 349 points for almost a 35-point per game average.

Defensively, the Tigers have allowed 186 points on the season – an average of almost 19 points per game.

The pressure will be on Rockwood to defend their home turf while the Warriors can relax and attack, attack, attack.

It will take 48 minutes to determine the outcome of Friday’s game that kicks off at 7 pm, but the Warriors want to make sure that they win each quarter of the contest to pull off the road win.